Rhinevalian Creole

Rhinevalian Creole (endonym: Rheinwellisch Kreol, historically Rheinwallisch Kreol) is a constructed auxiliary and creole language based on German and British and American English, with some influence by Ripuarian languages. The language was created for a now-defunct micronation known as Rheinwall as a neutral and, for speakers of both languages, trivially easy to understand national language, as the native languages in the nation were split almost evenly between English and German. Soon after its introduction as a national language, it was deemed an integral part of the nation's culture and an important language for policy.

Rhinevalian Creole
Rheinwellisch (Kreol), -wallisch
Pronunciation	[ˈraɪnˌwelɪʃ kreɔl]
Created by	Lily Jane
Date	2023
Setting	semi-fictional
Native to	Rhinevale
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic part. German and English Rhinevalian Creole
Writing system	Latin

Etymology

The language's exonym in English derives from the Rhine valley, the geographical position of Rheinwall's founding. The old name "Rheinwallisch Kreol" was named after the same but derived from the nation's name in Latin "Vallis Rheni", which became "Rheinwall". The new name "Rheinwellisch Kreol" was influenced by the English exonym's pronuciation of "vale", as well as being a wordplay on the German word for wave "Welle" and on the English "well".

Orthography

The alphabet of Rhinevalian Creole consist out of seven vowel letters, with ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨y⟩ being orthographical alternatives to ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ respectively, and 22 consonant letters, the digraph ⟨ch⟩ and trigraph ⟨sch⟩ counting as separate letters of the alphabet. Diacritics do not exist in coined words but may appear in loanwords such as café

Letters
Orthography	A	Æ	B	C	CH	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	SCH	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z

The creole distinguishes vowels in length, with vowels always being long in stressed syllables without a final consonant (i.e. open syllables) and are unmarked (single vowel letter) unless the entire word is monosyllabic. In syllables that end with a consonant (i.e. closed syllables), short vowels are the default while long vowels are to be marked by doubling the vowel, except in the case of ⟨æ⟩ which becomes ⟨ae⟩, and ⟨i⟩ which becomes ⟨ie⟩ in such cases. Open syllables that are unstressed have short vowels by default as well.

Most consonant letters are fairly predictable, though some letters may pose a challenge due to high degrees of allophony. Those letters, for a given syllable, are:

• ⟨c⟩, pronounced /k/ before ⟨a, o, u⟩ and after a vowel, /s/ or /ts/ before ⟨æ, e, i, y⟩ and after a consonant. Examples: Carl /karl/, Cent /(t)sent/, Danc /dan(t)s/.
• ⟨ch⟩, pronounced /k/ before ⟨a, o, u⟩, /ʃ/ in French loanwords and /tʃ/ before ⟨æ, e, i, y⟩. /x/ or // after ⟨a, o, u⟩ and /ç/, /x/ or // after ⟨æ, e, i, y⟩. Examples: Charakter/-cter /ka.​ˈ​rak.ta~-ɛr/, Charade /ʃa.​​ˈ​​raː.də/, Licht /lɪçt~xt/.
• ⟨j⟩, pronounced /j/, except for loanwords such as "Jakarta" or "Jungel", which may alternatively be spelled with ⟨dj⟩ for /dʒ/.
• ⟨r⟩, pronounced [r], [ɹ], [ʀ] or [ʁ] in free variation. May behave like a vowel in its own right after another vowel, depending on speaker's preference.
• ⟨sch⟩, pronounced /ʃ/ in every context. Never /sk/.
• ⟨w⟩, pronounced /w/ or /v/.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Coronal		Velar
Nasal		m		n		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t	d	k	ɡ
Fricative	f	v	s ʃ	z (ʒ)	h x
Approximant		w		l		j
Rhotic				r

As Standard German devoices all final obstruents, which are in this language characterized as there being a voiced/unvoiced pair may be pronounced either voiced (often called soft) or unvoiced (often called hard), while their unvoiced counterpart remains unvoiced and unchanged at the end of a syllable or word. The sound /h/ is a special case, as its historic appearance after a vowel in the end of a syllable has moved to /x/ (after back and central vowels, or all vowels depending on preference) or /ç/ (only after front vowels).

While the sonorants /m/ and /l/ do not change, no matter where they are in a word or syllable, many other sonorants behave very differently depending on their context; Before a /k/ sound, /n/ turns into /ŋ/ while a word-final /ŋ/ may alternatively be pronounced /ŋk/ and an intervocalic /ŋ/ be pronounced /ŋ.ɡ/. Rheinwellisch Kreol makes use of extensive free variation in rhotic sounds: [r], [ɹ], [ʀ] or [ʁ] are all valid pronunciations of intervocalic and initial /r/ sounds. The final /r/ sound may be the same, though a vocalic form of /r/ exists for after vowels in a syllable, with similar pronunciations to Standard German and RP English. The approximants /w/ and /j/ are analyzed as vocalic in syllable final positions, only allowed after the short vowels /a/, /ɛ/ and in some cases after /ɔ/, /w/ does not become /v/ under any circumstances here.

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front		Central		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	ɪ	iː			ʊ	uː
Mid	ɛ	eː~ɛɪ	ə		ɔ	oː~ɔʊ
Open			a	aː

If a syllable ends with a voiced obstruent, e.g. /b/, /d/, /v/, ⟨a⟩ may be pronounced /aː/. After a final voiced obstruent, an epenthetic [ᵊ] may be added, if this helps keep it voiced. So, "had" may be pronounced [haːd], [haːdᵊ], [hadᵊ], [had], [hat] and [haːt]. In unstressed open syllables /ɛ/ shifts to /ə/.

Grammar

A blend of grammatical features familiar to both English and German speakers, Rhinevalian Creole uses the common denominator between languages in its grammar, omitting some features from each side, leading to very regular and fairly simple conjugations and declensions, save for Latin loans. Nouns decline for number and definiteness with verbs conjugating for voice and tense. For nouns there is a vestigial genitive form similar to that in English, which is marked by -s.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns in Rheinwallian creole are divided into subject, object and possessive pronouns. The third singular is divided into three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Reflexive pronouns may be created by suffixing -self to any object personal pronoun.

Pronouns

	Subject	Object	Possessive
First Singular	i	mi	mein
Second singular	du	di	dein
Third singular	e/se/et	im/ir/et	sein/ir/sein
First plural	wi	us	ur
Second plural	ju	ji	jur
Third plural	de	dem	der

Demonstrative pronouns

There are two demonstrative pronouns: "dis" and "dat", used in both singular and plural.

Nouns

Articles

There are two sets of articles, indefinite and definite. The indefinite articles are "a" and "an", the former being used before consonants and the latter before vowels. The definite article "de" may be used for both, but depending on style "d'" before a vowel is permissible as well.

Plurals

After nouns, generally an -s is added to mark the plural. In cases where this is not possible due to being hard or impossible to pronounce -es is added instead. A singular word ending with -s is suffixed -sses in the plural form. Some irregular forms exist but are not very common, such as words ending with -ix being -ices in the plural.

Overview over all plural classes

Singular	Plural
-x	-ces
-um	-a
-us	-i
-s	-sses
etc.	-(e)s

The vestigial genitive remains -s in all cases. Affixed as ' to plurals already ending in an -s otherwise suffixed as -s. Example: de Bakteriums (the bacterium's) -> de Bakterias (the bacteria's).

Verbs

All verbs in the language end with either -en or -n. There are two irregular verbs "sen" and "haven". Verbs conjugate for tense, of which there are four, two of which periphrastic and one default (present) and for voice. There are no strong verbs in this language, meaning all but the two irregular verbs hold their pattern universally.

Example conjugation: drinken

	Present	Past	Future	Progressive
Active	drink	drinkte	schall drinken	is drinken
Passive	is drinkt	was drinkt	schall sen drinkt	is sen drinkt

The irregular verbs are conjugated as follows:

sen

	Present	Past	Future	Progressive
Active	is	was	schall sen	is sen
Passive	-	-	-	-

haven

	Present	Past	Future	Progressive
Active	hav	had	schall haven	is haven
Passive	is had	was had	shall sen had	is sen had